A Man of Two Worlds, One Foot in Technology, the other Nearly Off Grid
I had my take this job and shove it moment back in 2006. Since then, I’ve been running my own software company full time. I don’t know whether to consider myself semi-retired, or working at what I want to do. But what is clear is that over the last year, my life has changed drastically because of the cryptocurrency world.
When I was a child in this area (midway between Pulaski, and Mexico, NY), everyone was embracing technology and looking toward the future. Dad and Grandpa were busy building a new house in 1962 and mom and I were living in a trailer off to the side. After having lived in several major cities in the USA, I now live in grandma’s house about 1000 feet down the road from where I started.
(Dad holding me in front of the new house in 1962)
(Mom holding my little sister, and me on the left March 1963)
At the time at lot of people wanted to leave the country to live in the city. It was considered a lot more exciting to live in a big city than live out in the country. Now that sentiment has almost completely reversed. Anyone who can, should get out of the big cities as soon as possible. They have become a death trap.
Cities are inherently unsustainable because they require a hierarchy of trust and are centralized. So far we’ve been lucky that everything has worked out in the USA that allowed many people to specialize in a narrow field of interest in a symbiotic relationship. But every thousand years or so history tends to show a civilization ending collapse. The last one was around 400 CE. We’re overdue.
This industrial revolution created a completely foreign lifestyle compared to all the rest of human history which caused people to become isolated from nature and natural law. It created the social pressure for statism which creates legal fictions that have no parallels in nature. They create an imbalance between the reality as it actually is and what should be ones prudent actions in relation to that reality.
This social structure has allowed a gargantuan parasite to grow that sucks the lifeblood out of everyone attached to their legal fiction. This parasite allows you to survive inside the system, but in the process also turns you into a dependent, unable to survive on your own. It creates a dangerous mindset also not present in nature. When hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the wildlife all made their best efforts to get out before the storm. But what did people do? Many waited around for government assistance.
Slavery technically never ended in the south. It just expanded to include all the rest of us so we couldn’t tell the difference. I don’t mean to belittle the horrible conditions that blacks in the south had to endure because they surely did worse than any of us. But authority tricked all of us into relinquishing our birthright and went into the business of farming all of humanity instead.
Now there has been a fascinating trend in the place where I began; the Amish are coming in droves. They have brought back the old ways. When I was a kid, Dad was using a tractor by the time he grew up….
(Dad in 1955)
His older brother Arnie however was the last to plow the fields around here in the same way the Amish now do…
(uncle Bob far left, uncle Arnie and Dad in 1941)
So here I am, where I once started long ago, learning how to program blockchain technology and chopping wood. At some point in the future, I get the feeling I will only be doing one of these. This image seems to sum it up best...
Donations (public bitcoin address):
3FwxQsa7gmQ7c1GXJyvDTqmT6CM3mMEgcv
Wow that last picture is hard-hitting. It is hard to imagine society being flipped on its head, but I agree that it is an inevitability. I don't know how to program blockchain, I maintain my luddite status, but my grandparents always told me how important it was to know basic skills, so I learned them. I try to balance my knowledge of technology with the part of me that fights it. (I still like to write lists on paper, write paper thank-yous, read paper books. I like to plan calendars with bright colored pens, and feel the paper underneath as I write. I suppose it's strange, and Patrick thinks I'm crazy, but it makes me still feel connected in some way to what's real I guess.) I also try to print my pictures, just in case something happens to our power grid and we lose everything. I think about that often actually. I am a step below a prepper I guess, haha.
I would give anything to live off the grid. My father was a farmer in West Virginia, and that side of my family has been farmers going back to the 1700s. He lives for the Earth and the dirt, and I have always loved that about my dad. He moved to Arizona and ended up working 10 hours a day in a factory, putting together plane parts. I think it finally broke his spirit. I will never understand why people think that farm work is so terrible compared to "city work". Whether you work in a factory or a cubicle, it is still enough to break your spirit. I am almost at that point. I get along ok on Steemit, but I often fantasize about throwing my laptop across the room, calling our realtor, gathering our most beloved things and booking it out somewhere to live in the country. Giving our children the capacity to see live animals, how animals are born, how to care for them, the cycle of life outside of a public school power point presentation. But then I feel trapped, and like I will live in the daily grind city bubble forever.
Anyway, interesting article. It's awesome that you have those pictures of your family. I have some hidden away at my mother's house, and I used to treasure looking at them...another time...another world.
Welcome to Steemit! Love the pics and the story you wrote. I hope you enjoy your time here and be sure to check out DTube as well. It's the video platform based on the Steem Blockchain. Kind regards.
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This post has received gratitude of 3.78 % from @appreciator thanks to: @zoidsoft.